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Taylor: Southside Set For Scrimmage

Kevin has been a sports reporter for the Times Record since July 1999. He covers high school sports, with an emphasis on Southside High School. Previously, he was sports editor at the Palestine (Texas) Herald-Press from 1992-99. Kevin was selected the Texas Sports Writers Association Sports Writer of the Year in 1996. A native of Conroe, Texas, Kevin has won numerous writing awards and is the author of "Tiger Boogie," a book chronicling the school's dominate high school football run between 1961-85.

Southside football coach Jeff Williams has seen some improvements since the start of two-a-day football drills — not that the Rebels have actually participated in two-a-days in recent years.

The team went from 8 a.m. to noon from Aug. 4-15 prior to the start of school.

“While we’re getting better — and we’re a lot better than we were when we started from last spring — we still put the ball on the ground some and don’t make good decisions,” Williams said. “We’ve gotten better at situational stuff we’ve been working on, we’ve gotten better in those areas by playing smarter.

“But there are some things we can still fix and cleaned up before we play in two weeks.”

The Rebels hit the road for a scrimmage against Alma next Tuesday. Southside opens the 2014 season Sept. 2 against Warren at UAPB. Williams said both Clay Tyler and Cooper Johnson will see time at quarterback in the scrimmage.

“We have packages for both of them,” Williams said. “Right now, Clay will start us off, but Cooper’s going to play also.”

As usual, Tuesday’s scrimmage against Alma will be played close to the vest. Neither team wants to lose anyone to serious injury.

“We’re going to go with a 20-minute running clock at the beginning, that way we make sure we get enough reps in,” Williams said. “We’ll play one full half with a running clock in the second half.”

Williams said the Rebels are closer to figuring out who will start on the offensive line as well. Senior center Brett James is the team’s lone returning starter, although James will not play in Tuesday’s scrimmage due to an injured ankle.

Chris Nally and Tyler Grissman will man the left guard and left tackle positions. Sophomore Hunter Moreton will play right guard, and either Brandon Goines, Daniel Thomas or Grey Goodfellow will rotate at right tackle.